Tuesday, November 15, 2011

last Saturday

I went into town with my camera, intending to take photos of the Chinatown area around the Central Market.
The bus was a little crowded, so I got off a few stops early and walked up Wakefield Street towards Victoria Square.
I began to notice more and more people, all heading the same way as me. Families, many, many, small children and babies in prams.
Further down the street I could see crowds of them lining the middle of the road.

I'd completely forgotten it was Christmas Pageant day!
There wasn't a good spot for me to stop and take photos, so I decided not to take any and just kept walking towards the market.
But then I saw something I could climb up on and maybe get a decent photo or three....

I'd missed the first few floats and even standing up on something, I still couldn't get photos of the bands that were playing and marching along.
I could only get photos of the bigger floats that stood out above the crowds.
Here are some of those.

Jester

Christmas on Parade.

Smoke breathing dragon.

Ghostly Grove.

Naughty or Nice? This wheel spun as the float moved along, then stopped when the float stopped.
The choices were naughty, needs help, nice and I couldn't read the other one.

Aaarrgh! Ahoy me hearties! Captain Hook I believe.

This shiny kangaroo bobbed his way along.

Clowning around.

Toy Town

Christmas presents piled high. There were three such piles on this float.

Toys

Fairytale Cottage.

Have you ever heard a brass band play Funky Town? This one did.

Carollers.

Santa's Reindeer

Santa blowing kisses. When I was a kid, Santa threw lollies.

Santa waving to the kids.

I did eventually get to Chinatown and took photos too, but I'll post those another day.

Lightening; if I'd remembered I wouldn't have gone into town at all. Think of the photos I'd have missed!

Sarah; it often rains on pageant day, the sunshine was a surprise.300,000 people!

JeanetteLS; we have the biggest Christmas Pageant in the southern hemisphere.

EC; there's also the risk of kiddies running into the road to get the lollies and being run down accidentally by a clown on a bike or something.

pesky pixies; I rarely go to pareades even though I love them. The headache from the noise and glare isn't worth it.

Andrew; no tree climbing for me, I climbed up onto a block of concrete about 60cm high. Not high enough to see over the crowd properly.

Windsmoke; the photos turned out better than I expected, I had the old camera which doesn't have the "anti-shake" feature my new camera has. Only a couple turned out blurry, so of course I didn't post those.

Gosh I miss the Christmas Pageant, It was wonderful to see it all again through your eyes.

The only time I forgot about it was when I was cramming for my final year law exams. The exams were held at the Wayville Showgrounds in those days and this was a Saturday morning exam. I was living at Norwood at the time and needed to get a bus into town, then another to Wayville. Except the buses were all diverted, weren't they? Because of the pageant. God, I was in such a state when it happened and I could not find a taxi or anything travelling in that direction as all the floats left from West Terrace, so there was a road block set up and people and floats everywhere.

It was hot and I still had to run through the city, then the parklands up to the showgrounds, arriving red as a beetroot, sweating like a pig and totally livid. Luckily I did well in the exam, or Johnnies would have been on the recieving end of my wrath.